Home on the range, as it were.
Underneath the burners and above the oven. In the fiberglass insulation.
I'm like, "you're cute as hell, really you are, but you can't live in my stove; You just can't."
I'm not squeamish about it, I'm not angry, I'm not going to try to poison it, but I just can't have a mouse living in my stove.
At least I hope it's just one mouse.
I bought a live trap last weekend and caught one.
In the early frosty morning, I took it out to the collapsed chicken coop covered with brambles and explained to it "I'm giving you a chance. You probably won't survive this: You may freeze, you may die of fright, you may get eaten, but this is all I can do for you. I can't have a mouse living in my stove."
So either it is so clever that it's spiting me by returning to my stove, or the one I caught wasn't the one living in my stove in the first place.
I mean, I even pulled the stove out away from the wall and detached the backplate to try to route any mice out from my stove.
I even went online to the Maytag website to look for the owner's manual and instructions for what to do.
Maytag told me: "Do not attempt to lift the range top off of your stove. Unlike other stoves, the range top is sealed and will not spill drippings below. There is therefore no reason that you will ever need to lift the range off of the top of your stove." (Or something like that). But obviously Maytag didn't consider the possibility of a mouse living in my stove.
** Update: Even as I was writing this, and before I even got to the part that I was going to tell you how I put that live trap on top of my burner, I just heard a noise, and now I have a live mouse in a live mouse trap, on my stove.
The mouse is no longer living in my stove, now it is living ON my stove, in my mouse trap.
I guess I'll get my flashlight out and take the mouse out to the old fallen down chicken coop.
I'll need to give it the same pep talk as I did before: "I'm giving you a chance. You probably won't survive this: You may freeze, you may die of fright, you may get eaten, but this is all I can do for you. I can't have a mouse living in my stove."
This is a true story, it has all just taken place in real-time over the last 10 minutes that it took to write this.
Updated by VeganMilitia at Sat Apr 02, 2011 at 10:37 PM PDT
a day later, another mouse in the live trap.
Nobody is surprised, least of all me.
the calls to get a cat, use a trap, or poison grow louder.
There is a river within a mile, perhaps I shall take this mouse to the other bank;